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GRADING AND CLASSIFICATION OF CLERKS OF THE FOREIGN SERVICE AND PROVIDING COMPENSATION

JANUARY 29, 1930.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed

Mr. LINTHICUM, from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany H. R. 9110]

The Committee on Foreign Affairs has had under consideration H. R. 9110, for the grading and classification of clerks in the Foreign Service of the United States of America, and providing compensation therefor, and reports it to the House without amendment, with the recommendation that it do pass.

This measure is recommended by your committee as a means of increasing the efficiency of the Foreign Service of the United States and enabling it to respond more completely to the public need. The growth of the interests of the United States in foreign countries has been very great. The Secretary of State, Mr. Stimson, in his testimony recently before the Committee on Appropriations of this House, said:

While the war retarded the development of many other nations, it spurred the United States to a development in industry, finance, and commerce unprecedented. The nation became, almost over night, the world's largest creditor and most powerful competitor. Our foreign trade amounted in 1928 to $9,219,939,000, or nearly three times the amount in 1910. Our investments in foreign countries at the close of the calendar year 1928 had increased to $14,555,000,000 from only $8,105,000,000 in 1923. Our shipping has doubled; American banks and chambers of commerce are scattered all over the world; the number of our people who travel to foreign lands every year is nearly three times the number of those who went abroad before the war. More and more are international questions adjusted through international conferences. No important conference of nations now takes place without the participation of the United States having been invited * * *. No important question affecting the peace of the world, the freedom of commerce, the cooperation of nations in respect to great humanitarian enterprises is settled without affording the United States an opportunity to be heard. The participation of the United States in international affairs has become a matter of vital importance, both to the American people and to the peoples of other countries * * *. Moreover, every American who goes abroad, every shipment of American goods to a foreign port,

and every dollar of American money invested abroad constitutes an actual or potential problem for the Department of State and its agents abroad. As more American citizens, more American goods, and more American money go abroad, the number of American citizens and enterprises that meet with accident and misadventure and the call upon American official agencies for assistance or protection increases.

FOREIGN SERVICE

The agency of the Government of the United States charged with the protection of American interests abroad is the Foreign Service, the embassies, legations, and consulates of which there are 423, situated in 66 countries of the world and their colonies. The personnel of these establishments is divided into two classes-the so-called career or professional group and the noncareer or nonprofessional group. This committee has in the past initiated a number of measures which have become law designed to improve the career or professional personnel, the latest of which was the Rogers Act, written by the late John Jacob Rogers, a member of this committee. These measures have been highly beneficial. The Congress has, however, so far, given no attention to the improvement of the noncareer personnel of the Foreign Service, composed for the most part of clerks. There is no legislation fixing the scale of basic pay. There is no law requiring that promotion should be a reward of efficient service, although it is the practice to follow that principle. The existing law forbids the employment of a foreign national as a clerk in any American consulate at a salary of more than $1,000 a year, although in no other branch of the Government service of the United States abroad is there any such limitation. The result of this limitation, imposed in 1906, has been to drive out of the Foreign Service the best of the foreign clerks, who had rendered service of the utmost value to the United States.

NEEDS OF THE CLERKS IN THE FOREIGN SERVICE

The Budget estimates of the Department of State for the fiscal year 1931 provide for 2,113 clerks at a cost of $2,738,998. The average compensation of these clerks is only $1,288 a year. Of this number 757 are American citizens sent out from this country, who receive an average compensation of only $2,090 per annum. The remaining 1,356 are foreigners, who receive an average compensation of only $841 per annum.

The compensation of these clerks is fixed by the Secretary of State on the basis of the amount per person which he can afford to pay out of the total appropriation which the Congress makes each

year.

COMPARISON OF SALARIES

A significant fact brought out in the hearings before your committee is that while we look to the Department of State and the Foreign Service for the protection of the rights of our citizens abroad and while a large part of that responsibility falls upon the clerical staff of our diplomatic and consular offices, we are actually paying the clerks in this branch of the service less than the clerks in other branches of the Government service abroad with fewer responsibilities. For example, the Treasury Department pays as much as $1,500 a year to a

foreign clerk in its employ; the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce have no limit upon the amount they may pay. The Department of State, on the other hand, is limited by law to less than $1,000 a year, a limit fixed by Congress in 1906, 24 years ago, when cost of living and rates of clerical compensation were less than half the amount necessary to-day. The average compensation paid to American clerks by the Department of Commerce is $2,550, while the average paid by the Department of State is $2,090, or $460 less than the amount paid by the Department of Commerce. Yet many of the American clerks in consulates act as vice consuls and in many other ways aid in carrying on a business from which the Government receives annually nearly $7,000,000 in fees, and which involves the welfare of thousands of American citizens traveling or residing abroad. Out of 188 clerks in our embassies and legations, only 35 receive more than $2,600 per annum. Out of 1,925 clerks in our consulates abroad, only 24 receive salaries of more than $2,600 per annum.

EFFECT OF LOW SALARIES

The effect of these low salaries has been an extraordinarily large turnover in the clerical staff. The turnover in embassies and legations for the period 1925-1929 was 116 per cent, and in the consulates for the same period, 119 per cent.

IMPORTANT AND DIVERSIFIED DUTIES

Your committee has been impressed with the importance of the clerical personnel to the general effectiveness of the Foreign Service. Clerks in diplomatic missions supervise and perform the routine work of the missions, direct the messengers, care for the pouches, pay the bills, keep the official accounts and files, do the stenographic and typing work for the chief of mission, and make translations. The clerks in the consulates perform similar duties and, in addition, gather and compile commercial reports, shipping and other information and statistics, do the clerical work in connection with the enforcement of the immigration laws and, in certain of the offices, act as chief clerks and as vice consuls (sometimes having complete charge of the office), performing notarial and other similar duties. The effectiveness of every office depends in large measure upon the intelligence and efficiency of its clerical staff.

WHAT THE BILL IS INTENDED TO ACCOMPLISH

Your committee has reached the conclusion that there are two ways in which much needed improvement can be effected in the subordinate personnel of the Foreign Service.

(1) By providing a definite salary scale, for promotion on the basis of efficiency, for means of adjusting the compensation and the cost of living at the several posts, and for abolishing the limitation upon the amount to be paid to foreign clerks by the repeal under section 6 of this bill of section 5 of the acts of April 5, 1906 (United States Code, p. 646. sec. 57) entitled "An act to provide for the reorganization of the Consular Service," which reads as follows:

No person who is not an American citizen shall be appointed hereafter in any consulate-general or consulate to any clerical position, the salary of which is $1,000 a year or more.

(2) By providing more generous appropriations for the subordinate personnel of our embassies, legations, and consulates. The measure recommended would accomplish the following pur

poses:

(1) It would remove the limitation of $1,000 per annum on the pay of foreign clerks and place the clerks in consular offices upon an equality with the clerks in the offices of commercial attachés, customs representatives, and agents of the Department of Agriculture. The committee is convinced that this is essential to insure the employment of intelligent and efficient foreign clerks where needed.

(2) The measure would grade and classify the clerks in the Foreign Service at the following rates of compensation: $4,000, $3,750, $3,500, $3,250, $3,000, $2,750, $2,500. (Salaries below $2,500 to be fixed by the Secretary of State in his discretion.)

This scale of compensation is not in excess of the existing scale. The maximum is $4,000, whereas the existing maximum is $5,000, there being two clerks now provided for above the $4,000 maximum provided for in the bill.

(3) The measure would reserve the higher grades, known as senior clerks, with salaries ranging from $4,000 to $3,000 for American citizens only, and would prove an encouragement to young American men and women to seek a career in this branch of the public service. (4) The bill provides that promotion shall be for efficient service in the same manner as the Rogers Act provides for the promotion of Foreign Service officers.

(5) The bill provides, in section 3, for an additional amount to be added to the salary of a clerk assigned to a post where the ascertained cost of living is unusual and excessive, similar to the practice now observed in the case of Foreign Service officers of career. No separate appropriation would be necessary, however, since the bill authorizes the additional amount to be paid from the appropriation made by Congress for the compensation of clerks.

(6) The measure would reenact the existing law prohibiting the employment of any but American citizens as clerks in American diplomatic missions, a provision that has produced beneficial results and which has operated in a most satisfactory manner.

COST OF THE BILL

The Budget for the compensation of clerks in the Foreign Service for 1931 contains the following:

Diplomatic clerks.
Consular clerks...
Immigration clerks..

Total.

$456, 850 1, 884, 266 397, 882

2,738, 998

The compensation of clerks has been provided in three separate appropriations. If this bill should be enacted, it would contemplate a single appropriation for "Compensation of clerks in the Foreign Service," a change with many advantages to the Congress as well as to those who administer the Foreign Service.

If the existing clerical personnel provided for in the Budget for 1931 should be reclassified in accordance with the provisions of this bill by assigning clerks to the classes prescribed by the bill, nearest

existing salary rates and no increase in compensation be attempted there would be no additional cost over the amount included in the Budget for 1931. If, on the other hand, the compensation of the 1,043 lowest-paid clerks should be increased from $720 and $817 per annum to $780 and $840 per annum, respectively, the cost would be $105,452 above the estimates for 1931. If, on the other hand, the two classes of clerks now receiving $720 and $817 respectively should be raised to $900 and $1,000, respectively, the increase above the Budget estimates for 1931 would be $308,252. As these are matters of appropriation, they are not within the jurisdiction of your committee, but the committee ventures to express the hope that more generous appropriations should be made, in order that the clerks in the Foreign Service may be paid compensation more nearly commensurate with the value of the work which they perform and sufficient to enable them to live in a self-respecting manner abroad.

CONGRESS RETAINS CONTROL

Under the bill the Congress will retain its present complete control of the total amount to be expended for compensation of clerks and, in addition, will itself prescribe a scale of compensation, which is not now done, and will require estimates for appropriations to be submitted in accordance with the scale of compensation which it prescribes. The Congress, therefore, will not relinquish by the bill any of the powers which it now exercises, but it will take out of the hands of the administrative officers the fixing of basic rates of compensation for the higher-paid clerks in the Foreign Service and it will require the submission to it in a systematic manner of the detailed information upon which salaries of clerks are fixed. In requesting appropriations for compensation of clerks under this bill, it will become necessary for the Secretary of State to submit to the Bureau of the Budget and to the appropriate committees of Congress the following information: (1) For the year for which appropriations are desired; (2) for the current year; and (3) for the year immediately preceding a 3-year period (a) the total number of clerks employed and to be employed; (b) the number at each rate of compensation; (c) the number to whom additional amounts were allowed or are to be allowed because of excessive cost of living; (d) the number at each rate of additional allowance; (e) the cost of living at each post in the service, as ascertained by the Secretary of State, and the formula by which the cost of living was so ascertained.

A comparative statement entitled "Clerk hire-Foreign Service, Department of State" showing the clerical salary range in the Foreign Service and the proposed salary range under H. R. 9110 is annexed.

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